Chris and Beth Bruno host conversations at the intersection of psychology and theology. This podcast is powered by ReStory Counseling.
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We are Chris and Beth Bruno, and this is the Walking With Podcast.
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a team of brave and brilliant story work counselors and coaches around the country, all committed to helping you come alive. Join us as we explore the sacred landscape of the human heart at the intersection of theology, psychology, and ministry.
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Oh, you're kind of famous for something. And you know where I'm going with this already. Because if anyone of you has spent any amount of time with Chris Bruno, you have ended up crying. You just do that to people. That sounds terrible. No, it's- You've ended up crying. You make people cry. You have this superpower that's not-
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Out of rage or anger or fear, but like you look into their eyes and they can't help but cry. You just have this look and you have this tone and you have this superpower that people in your presence often are not far from tears.
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And I love like when we're talking and I'm just rambling and going on and on and telling you the story and you just do that. You go do deep dive into this one deep, thoughtful way of asking me a question and you give me this look. And then all of a sudden, it's not about anything I've been saying. And we both know what it's about. And we're there on that level.
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with that one powerful way of asking that you do. And you do it to all of us. I'm not the only victim. But I am curious if you would be able to talk briefly about how do we get to the places we've been talking about in these last few episodes. We talked about the Restory approach, the role of evil, being with someone in those places of harm.
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the role of kindness that when they want to go back to their place of shame and they see your face offering kindness, it's disruptive and it leads them to another place. That is all theoretically powerful in and of itself, but how do you get to those places with people? And, and we've talked about how many of them have been to...
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multiple counselors, they've been doing work for years and they come and get to these deeper places relatively quickly. How? How do you have eyes and how do you train others? Our whole team has eyes to see the working of story in some profound ways. Let's talk about how that happens.
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where we kind of give the overview and we give the facts about what our lives are like, or what the experience was like, or what I'm trying to fix, or whatever that is. And I would call that the content, that there is a certain level of content that people share, and that's helpful. It gives a structure, it gives a skeleton to the story. And most of the time,
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questions that we ask are content-based questions. So if I tell you that I grew up in Evergreen, Colorado, and I went to Evergreen High School, a content question would be, what year did you graduate? Or were the highways up to Evergreen in place back then, or have they been built since? Okay, so those are content questions. And those are general conversation kinds of things. And a lot of times we spend...
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the majority of our time in conversation on content questions. But there's something that is deeper and those are what I would call context questions. Context questions are not asking for more information, they're asking for the experience. What was the experience like? What did it feel like? And so what often people do is when they
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tell you their story, they give you content, but laced in the in between, in between the lines of the story, they're dropping little hints of context. They're dropping hints of, you know, okay, so Evergreen, where is Evergreen? It's a remote town, it's a rural town, and especially back when I was in high school, it was pretty far away, and there were just two-lane country
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of that content and basically the context of growing up in a mountain town, then I can begin to ask some curious questions around what it felt like to be so isolated, what it felt like to be so distant from other people, what might the experience have been like for me as a boy growing up in a place like that.
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That's not rocket science. It's just seeing behind the content into the context of what might be true, and then picking up some of those breadcrumbs or pulling on some of those loose strings to see, hey, where does this go? And in some ways the tears come because somewhere along the way I've caught you. Not like I've caught you as if I've captured you, but I've caught you wanting to be caught.
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I've caught you wanting to be caught and to be seen. And then I see, or we see as a, as Restory practitioners, we see in those places where you're desperate to be seen and yet desperate to not be seen. And so that's where the tears start to come because someone saw, because someone was able to be with you in the experience and not just in the content of what you were sharing. Most of the content is smoke screens.
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It's just to give some conversational space to go or a place to talk. But really what we want is we want to be found. It makes me think of the word exegesis and how it is the study, the reading of in between the lines and
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to exegete a passage in scripture is to read for what is not there. And this sounds like that process that the art of the re-story approach is really exegesis. It's looking for all that is not said. Right. And most of that which is not said are the places where pain and shame live.
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and where kindness brought into those places is disruptive and renewing. So those places in the in-between is where we are alone, where we feel desperately alone, which is why I said we want to be found, but we're trying not to be found. There's this kind of game that we play with one another, totally subconsciously, of I want you to know where I hurt and I don't want you to know that I hurt.
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And so that exegesis is absolutely right. Like what is not being said here? Who's strangely missing from the story? What are some of the elements that you've alluded to, but not said? Right. So what are some of the ways, I mean, if this can be taught because you are teaching people, what are some of the things that one can learn to improve on reading for context?
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I think the first thing, and this is more on the surface, but it's still so important, is to notice where, as we are telling our stories, there is a momentary flash of emotion. And I mean momentary, like tenth of a second on someone's face or a catch in their breath or something that has a little bit more power to the word. Those are places where there is going to be shame.
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or there is going to be pain. On the other side, it could also be joy and delight, but they're afraid to share that as well. But much of the time, it's going to be where shame resides. So that would be the first thing, is where there's some just general flashes of emotion. The other thing is where we begin to offer our own exegesis of our story, where we begin to tell you how I've come to understand myself.
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or I give some blanket statement of, well, I never had friends anyway, or I'm always like this, or I just have a problem with relationships. Those kinds of statements are really signposts to deep pain that we've come to accept as truth. That's the second story piece, but not really getting into, not really willing to get into some of where
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that pain came from and all the many narratives that stacked up to make that statement feel so absolute truth that it just is a passing statement in a conversation. Wow. But it's an entire identity statement. And it could be decades old. It's now truth. I always choose the wrong man. I never get my way. Life is just like that. Wow.
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So you see if you might see a flicker of emotion or you hear a statement like this, how would you pause and really start mining for some context there? You know, it again, it always depends on the person. I might just say, I'm not sure I believe that. Or I wonder where that comes from.
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or it feels to me that there's something more there. Just a slow statement like that just pauses us from barreling down the road of conversation to just be, hold on a second. I saw you depart. I saw you got off the main road onto a side trail just for a few seconds. And I'm curious where that side trail might go. And those are the side trails that often lead to...
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where evil first began to come in. Evil loves to lurk in the forest, the dark forest. And he's convinced us that if we just stay on the main road, then we won't have to face it, but the reality is our life is actually found, the wellspring of life is actually found in our forest as well. So he wants us to stay far away from those things. And so we give these blanket statements so that you and I both
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will stay off that unexplored path. So there is some collusion there. I mean, there's clients who come in and complain about years of therapy that never got anywhere. It's because they are brilliant at protecting.
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themselves from their own story being seen. We're all brilliant in protecting ourselves. And what has ended up happening is that whoever they've worked with has just joined them in staying on the main road and has not paused long enough to explore those unseen paths or cared to, or felt like it was most important to mitigate the symptoms so that we can cruise right along our main road.
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And that's what your word is collusion. Many people don't know what that means necessarily. It means like I am actually joining evil's work against you by perpetuating the cycle or the symptoms or the things that are happening relationally for you. So when someone drops something like that in the conversation and we don't stop to pause and ask those kinds of questions, I wonder if that might actually not.
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might not be true or there seems to be something more there when we don't stop, we actually just reinforce and reinforce and reinforce. Yeah. But in that moment, when we feel ourselves wanting to, to, to stop or wanting to drop that, right? Isn't that a sign as well? Like that we ought to pay attention to for ourselves, for ourselves, what's going on in ourselves. That this is a moment where I feel like I would like to collude.
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Oh, there is my sign that this is an incredible marker. One of the great statements that an author once said is he talks about these interpretations that we come to, right, that there's these belief systems, these structures, these interpretations that we come to as kids, as young adults, that get locked into our brains.
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And one of the beautiful things about the gospel is that it's all about a reinterpretation of what was there and what is actually true. We've come to believe this, but Jesus says this. How many times in the New Testament did Jesus say, you've heard it said, but I say. And that's that reinterpretation process. So anytime that you hear yourself say one of these statements or come to one of these things, it's worth pausing.
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It's worth wondering, it's worth journaling through and asking yourself, where did that come from? And I bet very quickly you will come up with five, six, seven, 10 stories that have all added up to a firm belief that what that statement says is true. And so those are the places. Now you started the whole podcast by saying I make people cry, okay? It sounds like it's torture to be with me.
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So I hope it's not torture. I hope there's some level of like goodness and tenderness that comes from being with someone who sees and longs to see and and I think that's you know, our whole team is made of people who are both gifted in and trained in the art of seeing and Seeing these kinds of things and then this generous kindness and curiosity to pull out those kinds of
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statements or questions or contexts so that we can explore actual healing and restoring, restorying the first story to return to this was not always so. You were never designed to be friendless. You were never designed to be an addict. You were never designed to have an overarching
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sadness that consumes your life, that was not God's intent for you. Let's return to some of those places and be curious about how we got here in the first place. Yeah. We are a kind team, but a disruptive one. Yes, we are disruptive. And you are a kind, but disruptive man. May it be.
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Thanks for listening to the Walking With Podcast, where we've spent the last year bringing you conversations at the intersection of psychology and theology. As a part of our Restory focus, we're changing the name this fall to the Restory Podcast. It will more broadly encompass what we're trying to do at Restoration and bring under one umbrella our work in the Counseling Center, in our digital laboratory, and with our brother and sister organizations, Restoration Project and Fierce and Lovely.
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You can find us in the exact same place, so don't go anywhere. The big shift comes on September 1st. Until then, join us next week as we continue to explore the Restory approach. See you then.